“Verizon is finally ready to acknowledge that cable TV just isn’t working for a lot of us anymore,” Timothy Stenovec reports for The Huffington Post. “The company is planning to launch its Internet-based TV service that can be watched on mobile devices in the “late first half of 2015,” Lowell McAdam, Verizon’s CEO, said at a Goldman Sachs investor conference in New York on Thursday.”
“It’s unclear what exactly the service would look like, but McAdam said it would offer ‘a la carte’ options, rather than being bundled like expensive cable packages are now,” Stenovec reports. “Think Netflix, but with live streaming. McAdam said at the conference that the service would include programming from ‘the big four’ networks — CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox.”
“Verizon’s move comes as the TV industry is set to undergo a massive shift. The rise of streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Instant Video and Hulu, which for a flat fee offer on-demand viewing of movies, TV shows and original programming, pose a threat to traditional “linear” cable and satellite. An increasing number of people — especially young people, a highly coveted demographic for advertisers — are cutting the pay TV cord and opting for streaming services over expensive cable or satellite packages,” Stenovec reports. “Verizon’s McAdam told investors that much of the technology is in place for the network. Now, the company is negotiating with content providers, which in the last two years have become much more receptive to delivering programming in different ways.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Well have to see exactly what McAdam means by “à la carte,” but if it really is sold on a per channel basis (or smaller bundles of channels), this may bode well for future iterations of Apple TV.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “LaughDogLaugh” for the heads up.]
I still expect revolutions from Apple this Fall.
I want to subscribe to HBO, without the middleman.
I was gonna cancel my Comcast, but my wife didn’t want to lose HBO. But when I called and told them I was gonna cancel, they lowered if from what they recently had jacked it to ($170) down to $90.
What pissed me off, was supposedly I was on a promo for really fast internet of like 50 megs, but I speed test it and it’s alway around 25 megs. I don’t ever remember being told it was supposed to be faster. Either that was BS or I didn’t have the proper modem.
I wish Albuquerque had more options.
in my neighborhood (east of tramway) most people are using directv.
That slow speed can be caused by many things in the mechanical leg of delivery. It is always best to report your findings so they can check for leaks and so forth since you should be within about 10% of the top-end. It could be something as mundane as an old drop from the tap, bad splitter or a squirrel chew on the hardline feeder.
That’s usually how fast the internet can move. It’s not the fault of the provider. Try opening multiple connections you should see you still have mbps to spare.
Hi Paul,
I live on the west side of Albuquerque, and we have Comcast. Switched from CenturyLink DSL, because it was that bad.
Are you using the Comcast supplied modem? If so, go buy the Motorola SURFboard eXtreme Cable Modem at Amazon or Best Buy (they are in the stores here). You will get a much cleaner signal with Motorola’s cable modem. Paired with the Apple AirPort Extreme (newer tall one) I am pretty happy with Comcast. I have 50 Mbps with boost, and I routinely get over 50 Mbps.
I cut the cord January 2013 and have saved $2390 to date. Cable series I used to watch I now by à la cart via iTunes or on blu-ray compilations. The savings is what I used to pay DirecTV less what I pay for the à la cart shows.
A lot of cable series show up the day after they first broadcast (I’m currently downloading yesterday’s Doctor Who episode from iTunes). Sadly HBO and Showtime series show up about about a 11 months or so after they first broadcast, but $2390 is a lot of money to have saved to be a year behind on a handful of shows.
You might also be surprised at the content you can obtain for free via antenna. When broadcasts switched to HDTV one of the new features was subchannels – a single broadcast frequency can broadcast multiple shows at the same time. Due to this we get over 100 channels here in Houston. There’s dedicated movie channels, channels devoted to classic TV shows, etc. I’ve even been watching a number of cable series I’d missed for free, such as Burn Notice and Psych, via local broadcast.
More information in my blog about my Mac mini DVR:
http://atariage.com/forums/blog/blog-148/cat-150-dvr-project
Yeah, you can and should negotiate for a lower rate. It works. I chopped close to $50/month from my bill, and they made it retroactive from when they jacked it.
As far as speed goes, are you using wired or WiFi? Try plugging into your router directly and check your speed. It will probably be a good bit faster than WiFi, particularly if you have an older router. I don’t doubt that Comcast is screwing you – that is a way of life for cable companies. But your service might not be as slow as you think.
Speaking of WiFi, use Airport Utility to change your channel. By default, pretty much everyone is using the same channel. My WiFi has been faster and a lot more reliable since I selected a channel that none of my neighbors is using.
Comcast is about to go thermonuclear on this.
Competition: Always a good thing in commerce.
But does Comcast actually go head-to-head with Verizon anywhere? If not, what’s their incentive to care what Verizon does?
Finally!
I hope VZW can crack this nut. It’s what most people would want, given a choice.
This still means we’re going to get jacked over the years as the 3-10 channels we buy go up and up. I think verizon and comcast are never a good solution.
à la carte, to me would be the individual shows I want to watch.
I cut the cable cord years ago because there was too much junk that I do not want to watch, or help support.
As for the local broadcast channels I can already get, unless they’re commercial free, why would, no make that why should, I have to pay to watch commercials!?
Just last week I switched from Comcast to dish network and paying $40 now and their dish anywhere app is really fantastic, It allows you to watch live tv anywhere:)
As long as you can stream to your 65″ HDTV. I wouldn’t switch if I could only receive programming on my iPad mini.
Airplay!
They can disable Airplay in their app. Like the NFL does.
To make thus viable they would need to charge no more then $1 per channel.
If we are talking about Verizon Wireless, do you really want to watch several hours a day of HD programming on each of 2-3 TVs or devices at their current 4G data prices? If we are talking about Verizon the Telco, do you want to draw down all that data at the 3 Mbps rate that is the best they offer in many locations?
Look at Comcast “TVGO” app. Suspect Verizon’s offering to be through a similar look and feel.
Now if Verizon can just absorb the bandwidth costs to deliver to the devices this would be a perfect solution..
Verizon excels in finding what customers want and making them not want it anymore.
In the end, the question will be cost. What’s any ‘channel’ really worth? Of course they’ll all attempt to gouge the user to the max. What’s nice in à la carte is being able to drop pieces rather than having to drop the everything, or major chunks of everything forced on users by non-competitive cable TV.
I don’t want channels. I think that no one wants channels either. What we all want is programs and we want to choose them based on our preferences and not the vendor’s bias.
a little is ok, even good, even educational but it doesn’t take much of the wrong kind of tv to rob you of all the things that make life worthwhile.
there is a guy where i work who does nothing else. there is little left of him that’s human. i can see the fatigue in his defensive, beady eyes. i hear it in his slurred and unoriginal celebration of stupid movies.
to all-you-can-eat-buffét is animal, to á la carte is human.
Funny this is what XBMC is. I get live tv plus all the movies and tv i want. But about time that the big companies see that the way we view cable and satellite today is not what people want